


A Due

by BlameMyMuses



Series: Beat and Melody [6]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, bathtub shenanigans, dave is shocked and slightly embarassed at the sight of aradia in a towel, troll anatomy things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-16
Updated: 2015-11-16
Packaged: 2018-05-01 21:25:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5221367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlameMyMuses/pseuds/BlameMyMuses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a due: "intended as a duet; for two voices or instruments; together"</p>
<p>Dave has some insecurities, and Aradia is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to helping her moirail work through them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Due

**Author's Note:**

> So many people stop posting fic during November, due to NaNoWriMo, I thought I'd post this first half, just to help the month pass by. 0u0

So you're nose-deep in suds, and you've got music playing low, and candles burning, 'cause you are soaking in a bubble bath. For irony. And because sulking.

 

...okay, so maybe it's not completely for irony's sake. Fuck romance. Fuck boy problems. Fuck _boys_!

 

No. No no no no no. Not gonna go there. Over-active imagination be damned, you are in this tub to pine and sulk and mope, and no thoughts of Karkat are gonna enter here. Here be sick beats and no monsters. Especially not angry little chest-monsters that burn your cheeks and make your heart go all off-tempo.

 

You whimper, and sink another inch into the bath.

 

“Dave, what are you _doing_?”

 

You flail, get a pair of nostrils full of soap, and slip underwater with a muted _bloorp_ as the water swallows you.

 

You come up sputtering. She’s standing there, just next to the sink, watching you.

 

“Aradia, _no_!” you squeak. “I'm—I'm naked?”

 

“...yes. And?”

 

“And I'm _naked_! Why are you in here!?”

 

“You've been in here for an hour! I was worried! I know for a _fact_ that humans aren't amphibious, so what's going on?”

 

Your shades are out of reach, but you're pretty sure she wouldn't let you wear them right now, anyway, and so you feel doubly exposed. You scoop the bubbles closer, not that you have any dignity left to hide.

 

“It's a human self-pity ritual,” you mutter, and she has the gall to laugh in your face.

 

“Liar,” she says, and her tone is warm and fond like sun on asphalt and french horns at daybreak. “What's really going on?”

 

You splash a bit, then remember you don't want to disturb the bubbles and stop, instead poking idly at a rubber duck you'd alchemized. It has your sunglasses and a tiny little mayoral sash. If you dawdle enough, maybe Aradia will give up...?

 

Hah. Like that would ever happen. She's tenacious, your girl, and like a terrier when she sets her teeth to something. You sneak a glance up and find she's still watching you, but now her arms are crossed and her horns slightly lowered. You're getting better at reading Alternian body language.

 

You avert your eyes again, sinking down into the water until you're little more than just a pair of tired eyes and a pair of knobbly knees sticking out awkwardly because you haven't really grown into yourself yet.

 

“I'm pretty sure he hates me,” you say after a long pause.

 

“Karkat? Of course he doesn't! Or—” Aradia looks thoughtful for a moment. “No more than he hates anyone, anyway.”

 

“Ha. And also ha,” you say. “You weren't there. I said something really...” Really stupid. And a bit too heart-on-your-sleeve and obvious, and shit you don't actually know the first thing about how trolls flirt? You and Aradia have time on your side, you got to do things all out of order, but Karkat's linearly limited, and not privileged to have the same access to second chances that you have. Fuck.  
  
“And you didn't think to just go back and change it?” asks Aradia.

 

“Thought about it,” you admit. “Didn't. 'S not fair to him. You know?”

 

Her eyes are lamp-bright as she beams at you, so proudly, and she leans half into your bath to kiss you hard on the forehead. “What did you do in the first place?”

 

A groan, and you are sinking back down below the bubbles. Mermaids. You fucking need a mermaid hereabouts to drown your pathetic ass.

 

“Ah ah ah!”

 

Ouch. Moirails are mean, and yours has you by the fucking hair, and you can't sink any further. You flick water at her.

 

“Dave, I can't help you unless I know what you've done.”

 

You don't answer for so long that the silence begins to fester, and then sigh and give in. “How did you know you and Captor were, uh, flushed for each other?”

 

She's no longer gripping your hair, and is instead running her fingers through it, parting it in all the wrong directions, but it's soothing. She looks thoughtful, and eventually she pulls back and settles down on the closed lid of the toilet.

 

“Well,” she says after a beat, “Sollux is kind of an idiot, you may have noticed. I had to tell him that he was being a dumb-ass and that I was flushed for him before he went and did anything too stupid trying to impress me.” Her eyes go as sharp as her horns and she pins you with a look, and shit, she really has the measure of you, doesn't she.

 

“And you, Dave? What did _you_ do to let Karkat know that you're flushed—sorry—have 'a crush' on him?”

 

You try to sink into the bath again. Your bubbles are thinning. You scrunch them in closer like there's no tomorrow. You're so embarassed you might actually prefer that there be no tomorrow. Hell, you could groundhogs day this thing up and just never actually let tomorrow happen...

 

Fuck. You bury your face in your hands and try not to die of humiliation on the spot.

 

“I...may have implied I wanted to jump his bones,” you mutter into the soggy remains of your palms. “And then panicked,” you add, because Aradia is making encouraging noises and she is Wrong™ to do so. So very wrong and she doesn't understand. “I panicked, and said something awful like haha no gross you're gross and so is your alien junk and I was just messing, who'd wanna screw someone not their own species ew, and then I fucking _absconded_ and have been hiding in here ever since because I _do_ want to touch his alien junk _okay_? And now I never will!”

 

Your voice gets kinda awkward and pitchy at the end there, and you absolutely refuse to raise your face out of your hands because you'd be laughing if you were sitting where Aradia is sitting, and someone just said that to you, because you are an asshole. Capital 'a' Asshole.

 

“Oh, _Dave_ ,” she says. You can hear the laughter in her voice, even if she _is_ trying her hardest not to let it out. “Why would you go and do such a stupid thing?”

 

Why. That is the question. Fuck whatever the fuck Hamlet was on about. Motherfucking _why_ is the question.

 

You drape yourself over the edge of the tub and rub circles at your temples. You can hear it just at the edge of your awareness, the beat in the timeline, the one you misstepped. You could rewind and fix it, get it right this time, or avoid it altogether. But that's not a good basis for a relationship. You are really bad at interpersonal shit like that, but that one's obvious even to you.

 

You can't leave your moirail hanging though, even if this is the weirdest feelings jam you've ever had. What with you being naked as a nakkodile and all.

 

So you tell her.

  
She laughs at you. Loudly. Your face is as red as your godtier pajamas.

  
“Oh, darling,” she says, and it’s kindly and mocking and tender. “If you’re afraid to pail Karkat because you don’t know what troll junk looks like, all you had to do was ask!”


End file.
